Columbia University Presents BIRTHDAY TRIAGE, 3/7

Columbia University will present BIRTHDAY TRIAGE - an immersive, multi-media performance in which the audience accompanies one of four characters on their personal journeys as their birthday worlds collapse and unveil their mythological DNA. Four plays weave in and out of each other like DNA strands as audience members glimpse the shattered pieces of the characters' lives.

Simón Adinia Hanukai (MFA Directing Candidate 2012), Naïma Kristel Phillips (MFA Playwriting Candidate 2012), and their ensemble of collaborators began a journey last spring to discover their true identities. After taking a DNA test, the ensemble began to question what genuinely defines who people are and what they will become. In the struggle to reconcile these issues of nature vs. nurture, the creators ultimately asked, “How do we piece ourselves back together?” In BIRTHDAY TRIAGE, Hanukai and Phillips fuse ancient mythology and the modern human experience to explore a shattered world. By enabling the audience to travel and engage with individual characters on their explorations of identity and reconciliation, this intimate experience blends the realms of the actor and the audience member, creating a new theatrical world.

Simón Adinia Hanukai (Co-Creator / Director) Originally from Baku, Azerbaijan, Simón has recently relocated to New York City from Oakland, California, where he was a founding member of headRush Crew and the Co-Artistic Director of the Destiny Arts Youth Performance Company. Since arriving in New York his directing credits include My Artichoke Heart (Theater for the New City), Can't Stop, Won't Stop (2010 Hip Hop Theater Fest), The 6 Project (BAX), Brave Ducks (FringeNYC, 2011). He has also had the privilege to assist Anne Bogart on Death and the Ploughman (Skidmore College) and Robert Woodruff on Festen (Hungarian Theater of Cluj, Romania), as well as observe Robert Lepage work on Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (The MET). Simón has an MA in Education from the USF’s Center for Teaching Excellence and Social Justice and is currently attending the MFA program in Theater Directing at Columbia University.

Naïma Kristel Phillips (Co-Creator / Author) Born and raised in Montreal, Canada, Naïma trained as a performance artist at the Centre international des arts de la scène before she moved to Paris to practice Voice Performance and Choreographic Theatre with Enrique Pardo, Linda Wise and the late Elizabeth Mayer at Pantheatre ACTS and the Roy Hart Centre (Cévennes, France). Her playwriting credits include Night Spell (Nextfest, Edmonton, Canada) and My Artichoke Heart (Theater for the New City). Workshop presentations at Columbia include 6 Variations in a Single Flutter, Murder of the Oak/Reed and an anti-reading, installation of Time Suites: Camille and Rodin. Naïma is currently writing a play commission for the Black Theatre Workshop (Montreal, Quebec). She is honored to be receiving the mentorship of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui whose company she will observe in June. Naïma is an MFA Candidate in Playwriting at Columbia University and she is a recipient of the 2010 Gloria Mitchell-Aleong Award and the Shubert Presidential Fellowship.

BIRTHDAY TRIAGE will play from March 7-10th at the Horace Mann Theater. For more information, visit www.ColumbiaStages.org